


Blood Red Lips

by sockfics



Series: Once Upon a Dark Time [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Schneewittchen | Snow White (Fairy Tale), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), The Prince and the Pauper - All Media Types
Genre: Aftercare, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anal Sex, Chastity Device, Cunnilingus, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Double Penetration, Double Vaginal Penetration, Fellatio, Fuck Or Die, I’m Really Going To Hell This Time, Loss of Virginity, Multi, Palace Intrigue, Period-Typical Underage, Political Intrigue, Sexual Slavery, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Threesome - F/M/M, Twincest, whipping boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-05-31 14:19:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15121259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sockfics/pseuds/sockfics
Summary: Plans within plans.  Schemes within schemes.  For the safety of everything he values, James has had to learn how to navigate them without being trapped by them, or to avoid them altogether.  Only this time, his entire future is at stake if they lose.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. So.
> 
> I hadn’t planned on this story involving James this way, just to be clear. When I conceived of this fic, I never intended him to be more than just another dark character imposing his will and desires on Snow and Charming.
> 
> Except as this story found its way out of my head as a conceptual double-penetration scene and onto the page, his character grew more complex. I realized that David’s influence would’ve tempered George’s in the AU I’ve created, and, as such, changes him from the two-dimensional spoiled sociopath that we saw in canon into someone with a much grayer morality.
> 
> I do not own any of the characters that appear in this story. Once again, I’ve aged down characters to match the quasi-historical period in which the Enchanted Forest seems to exist. Comments of a positive nature are welcome, as is constructive criticism. Flames will be deleted without response.

**~~~***~~~**

“Do we have a deal?”

King George sat back, allowing himself a moment to take the measure of the woman before him. At 22, Regina of Misthaven was a newly-widowed queen, her ripe figure shown off in far more provocative style than she’d worn prior to her husband’s death. The young princess and rightful heir to her late husband’s throne was said to be even lovelier, her own chastely-hidden charms enhanced by the lusciousness of being forbidden, but no one had seen the girl since her father’s funeral.

What Regina offered was an answer to his problem, surely enough. And it neatly solved one of her own as well, which put the powerful witch-queen, rumored to be the apprentice of the Dark One himself, in his debt. Being owed a favor by such a woman could only be profitable in the long run. “Can you assure me that there won’t be any surprises?”

Regina’s eyes narrowed slightly, her smile becoming razor-edged. “My dear George… I’m not sure what you take me for. Naturally, it’s been carefully checked and secured before I approached you. I don’t make deals in bad faith.”

That was a good enough assurance for him. George nodded and extended a hand. Nothing could possibly be found in writing about this entire business. It was safest for all concerned… not that it would matter to anyone in a few months’ time. “Then we are in agreement.”

“Excellent.” Regina’s smile was still sharp enough to open veins, her dark eyes glittering. “You’ll receive what you’re paying for by nightfall.”

“Paying for?” George startled.

“Oh, you mean you shook on the deal without considering payment?” Regina’s tongue clacked derisively. “Now, now, George: I expected better from you. You of all people know that no gift ever comes without a price. And I expect payment in full immediately, or I’ll find someone else to handle this little issue for me.”

“And what is the price you’ve set on this arrangement?” George ground out, his jaw set.

“There’s an object currently in the possession of your family’s patron fairy,” Regina told him casually. “I’d like to discuss it with her.” One hand reached up, tracing lacquered fingernails as sharp as talons along the collar of his doublet. “You’re going to tell me how to contact her… right now… or you’ll need to find something else to amuse your son.”

Gall burned in his throat. The trap was neatly laid and he’d walked directly into it, stupid fool that he was, thinking that the Dark One’s pupil would be so careless as to make a deal that left them vulnerable. “She only comes after dusk: spontaneously to those whose hearts are innocent but in pain, but she responds to summons as well. I haven’t summoned her since my wife’s death.”

“But if you were going to try?”

“Send your wish to the first star of the evening,” he admitted, his tone grudging despite knowing that he had no choice. “She will come.”

Regina’s smile grew, if possible, even sharper. “Perfect.”

**~~~**

Returning from his afternoon ride, James was looking forward to a bath and dinner in his rooms. The diverse charms on offer from the ladies of the court held little appeal of late, and he had less patience for the intrigues that brewed there. Eventually, he would have to marry, to produce an heir and maintain the succession, but until then, he felt little inclination to leave himself vulnerable to the schemes of social climbers eager to gain influence by pandering to his vices.

Jack had understood, of course. But she had been unique amongst the women of his acquaintance, and now lost to him besides.

He was nearly to his apartments, his lips parting to order the bath, when one of his father’s pages approached him. “Yes?”

“His Majesty requests that you meet him in his solar, your Highness, on a matter which cannot be delayed.”

Swallowing back a growl; it was hardly the page’s fault that James would’ve liked a bath before being summoned by the king; James nodded curtly and ordered that his bath be ready for him when he returned from King George’s chambers before following the teen through the winding corridors. George was seated at his desk, writing something, and barely flicked a glance upwards when James entered the room. “You summoned me, Father?”

“We receive delivery of a new slave this evening,” George replied calmly. He continued writing, the rhythm of his penmanship unbroken as he spoke. “You will take charge of her and see that she is properly broken in to the ways of this castle and the duties of her new life.”

The growl threatened again, harder to choke back. “Why me? Surely the matron would be better suited to train a new purchase.”

“Since I doubt the matron has ever warmed your bed, I think that would be a tad pointless.”

James’ mouth fell open in surprise. He stared at his father for what felt like several minutes, his skin suddenly clammy as if a bucket of cold swamp water had been dumped over his head.

“Most princes would be grateful to hear that a new bed warmer had been acquired for them,” George commented mildly, sanding his parchment and setting it aside to dry before looking up at his heir with expectant mildness. “Especially without their needing to ask for one first.”

“Perhaps if I’d ever expressed the slightest interest in having one, I’d have some idea of how to respond.” The words slid out before James could check them, and behind them flowed out still others. “If this is some flimsy excuse to hide your own desire for a warm hole-”

“This is about you continuing to mourn a woman that would never have made a suitable queen,” George returned, the bite in his voice silencing James in a heartbeat. “This is about everything you think I don’t know about what happens in your chambers after the sun goes down. And more importantly, this is about ensuring a succession that you seem to care nothing about despite knowing the lengths to which I’ve gone to secure it.”

“Reminding me of that won’t help your case,” James snapped.

George stood, his expression stony. James refused to quail in the face of it. Mercifully, however, George didn’t call for his whipping boy to be summoned. “No, but perhaps this will: the girl’s life hangs in the balance. If you cannot bring her to heel and keep her there, she will be disposed of. Permanently.”

James’ blood turned to ice. “And why should that matter to me?” He hoped there wasn’t a croak in his voice. “One slave is much the same as another in the end, and being passed from one master to another as nothing more than a ripe hole to fuck isn’t the sort of life most slaves consider worth living.”

“The girl is a virgin,” George told him. “And her existence presents a considerable complication for someone that will have no qualms about ending it. The only reason the girl is still alive is because they considered it potentially more profitable to try using her as a bargaining chip first.”

“So they traded her to you for something they wanted, on the promise that keeping her legs spread for me would prevent her from causing problems for them.” James was thinking rapidly now, his mind turning over the possible identities of the girl’s seller. It was well known that Rumplestiltskin had ended the Ogre Wars for the price of King Maurice’s virgin daughter, but there was also equal doubt that the girl had remained virgin for long after her arrival at his palace. And he wasn’t the sort that anyone would try to fool by substituting a maiden servant for the young princess. There were any number of houses in the Enchanted Kingdoms that might need to dispose of a by-blow that shouldn’t exist, but for the girl to be old enough to trade as a bed slave, it seemed to be an unlikely scenario. Her existence would have to have been hidden for too many years.

“And so it will, for your sake as well as hers,” George told him, his tone ominous as he stepped around the desk to stand a few inches from James. “You will bed her, and you will breed her. In time, the children of the union will be legitimized for the sake of the succession, with plenty of assurances to satisfy the holy folk that any children you sire on a lawful wife will be given precedence.”

Eyes narrowing, James studied George’s face for a long moment. It made little sense that the man would be so adamant that James use the girl to beget a line of successors that would, at best, be considered half-breeds unsuitable for royal inheritance by most of the peers of the realm. There was something being kept back here, and James didn’t like secrets. There were too many surrounding this kingdom as it was. “Care to tell me why you’ve decided on this particular girl as the bitch you want to breed me with?”

“That’s none of your concern at the moment.” George met James’ calculating gaze with a steely one of his own. “Now go clean up and get something to eat; you stink of horse.”

“Next time, send your summons before my afternoon ride,” James retorted, the words all but hissing through his teeth. “Or tell your pages to allow me a bath before conducting me into your presence.”

A fractional nod.

James never saw the blow coming before it cracked across his mouth, snapping his head around and slicing a tooth across his lip.

“Next time, I’ll have your whipping boy earn the moniker,” George informed him as James lifted his head back around to look at him. “Now get out.”

“Yes, Father.” Wiping at the blood trickling from his lip with one thumb, James turned and left.

**~~~**

Hours later, James was attempting to relax in his sitting room, unable to focus on anything as he awaited the delivery of the slave girl. Electing simplicity, he’d changed into a lawn shirt and breeches after his bath, but even lounging barefoot before the fire with a block of fine wood and his carving tools was doing little to settle his nerves. Ordinarily, he’d be receiving a foot massage, or playing chess, or practicing with his short blades. But he didn’t want to intimidate the girl by having someone else in the room when she arrived, and having a blade in hand was likely to create _entirely_ the wrong impression of how he intended to spend the evening in her company.

The door to his chambers finally opened, and James stood up as two guards dressed in black traveling leathers and armed with daggers entered. The young woman that was to be his new bed mate was between them, each of them gripping one of her upper arms.

Half a head shorter than he, with hair as black as a raven’s wing hacked short by an uncaring hand; it had likely once been long enough to reach her mid-back, as was the current fashion. The darkness of it was a sharp contrast to the almost glowing whiteness of her skin, as were the large, dark eyes that brimmed with tears. Her nose was pert and perfect, her cheeks flushed somewhat from crying; at least, what he could see of them was. The lower half of her face was obscured by a dark leather muzzle gag tied behind her head and fitted across her mouth and under her jaw.

Whomever had cast this girl into this life didn’t want her pleading with her transporters. As if there was a real chance that she might sway them to free her if she had her voice.

She was staring at him with those huge, frightened eyes, her escorts waiting for him to give word that they were dismissed. He allowed them to remain for another moment, taking quick stock of the rest of her. The shift she wore was travel stained but otherwise appeared in good condition. Her arms were bound behind her back; by what he couldn’t tell; but her feet weren’t hobbled by anything other than a lack of shoes. From the lack of blood or bruising, she hadn’t been marched here in the open. Like most slave shifts, the one she wore barely reached her knees, but it was still long enough to conceal bruised thighs. The sleeves were short enough to show that the men dragging her about by her upper arms hadn’t been so rough about it as to leave marks, so it was unlikely that any were concealed beneath the thin linen, but he would know that soon enough.

“Prince James?” one of the guards finally asked. James shifted his attention with a faintly annoyed cast to his features, taking some satisfaction in the way the man almost faltered in the face of it. “We’re here to-”

“I know why you’re here,” James snapped. “And she’s the only one that needs to stay. You’ve done your duty; now get your hands off my property and get out of my sight.”

Her knees gave out, and she crumpled to kneel on the floor as they released her and left him with a bow, though one of them deliberately placed a small key on a nearby table before doing so. James chose to ignore that for the moment, stepped past her and barred his door for the night with a snarl, before turning back to the only person in this situation more trapped than he. “I’m going to take the gag off,” James assured her quietly. “And unbind your arms. I’ll need to use my knife to do so, so hold still for me, all right?”

A nod of that coal-black head, and then James was using his sharpest whittling knife to cut the ties on her wrists before moving up to her muzzle. Her fingers hooked into the leather wrapped around her face to peel it away as soon as it loosened, dragging in a breath that was half-gasp, half-sob. “Please,” she rasped. “Please, don’t hurt me. I don’t know what they’ve told you but I haven’t done anything; I promise; I’ll go away and never be heard from again if you just let me go-”

“Shh.” James came around to crouch in front of her, having carefully set the knife aside before doing so. “No one’s told me anything, other than that you’ve been brought here for me.”

“Then please,” she begged, her eyes filling anew. “Please just let me go. She killed my father; I don’t know why she’s doing this instead of killing me; but you don’t have to do this. Just help me get on a ship to Arendelle or Glowerhaven or even Agrabah; I’ll go and never come back; you’ll never hear from me again and neither will she, I swear-”

“Easy, easy.” James put a finger to her lips, noting that she trembled beneath his touch but didn’t jerk away, her breath shaking and her eyes sliding closed in terror. “You look like you could use a drink, and I think I want to hear the whole of this story you’re spinning. Can you stand?”

Opening her eyes, the girl took a measure of him before nodding. The hand she slipped into his was soft and uncalloused, and James was suddenly very, very sure that he knew who had traded her to his father. And why.

Settling her into a chair, James saw her wince faintly as he stepped back to pour her a glass of wine. “Are you injured at all?”

“No; the Black Guards were very careful with me.” She accepted the wine with open gratitude, taking a careful drink to wet her throat as he sat in the chair opposite her. “It’s just some chafing and ache from traveling; I’m fine.”

James nodded, waiting until she’d taken another drink from the glass before asking: “You’re Princess Snow, aren’t you?” She nodded, her lower lip trembling slightly as her eyes widened, and James sighed softly in resignation. He now understood, probably far better than she, exactly what had carried her into this situation. “And the rumors about your father’s death are true; Queen Regina had him murdered.”

Tears spilled from her eyes at that, and James offered her a cloth to wipe them away. “Yes. She seduced the genie that my father befriended, so it was his hand that took my father’s life, but on her orders. And now she’s sold me like a dress she’s grown tired of to get me out of the way, and claimed the kingdom for herself.”

“And in such a way that, even if you were found, you would be seen as ruined and unfit to rule.” Her eyes widened a little, as if she’d never considered that before, and James felt a stab of empathy. He’d needed to learn very quickly how to see every angle and motive, often before the move was made, because those that couldn’t see the whole board and the players behind it never saw the knife before it struck.

“She hates me,” Snow told him quietly. “Because I told a secret, and her soulmate died because of it. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know what would happen; she’s doing this to punish me.”

“She’s doing this because you’re a threat to her power,” James argued. “So long as you’re alive, there are those that would rally to your cause and seek to depose her. Even in your absence, they could do so. And if what you say is true, then killing you is too swift to pay you back for her suffering. But by selling you into bed-slavery, you’re no longer fit to rule in the eyes of most courtiers even if you are found alive.”

“But that’s why you have to let me go,” Snow pleaded, her hands gripping around the wine glass like it could shield her. “Regina will never know, and you could claim to have killed me for some offense and disposed of my body. I can disappear somewhere beyond her reach-”

“Except I can’t, Snow.” James watched her lower lip tremble again and wished he could make this easier for her to hear. “I’m no more free in this situation than you are.”

“You’re King George’s only son,” Snow argued. “Believe it or not, I am familiar with what it means to be the heir to the throne.”

James shook his head. “You are the true-born daughter of King Leopold and Queen Eva, and royalty by blood and birth as well as name.”

“Yes and so-”

“King George bought me from my real parents,” James told her, cutting her off. He watched her eyes grow impossibly wide, this time in shock, before softening in sympathy. “I’m little more than a slave myself: purchased so that he would have an heir to the throne that he could call his own blood. His wife was barren, but they found my parents, who were poor farmers, and struck a deal. The queen went into seclusion until I was born, and the only ones that know the truth of the matter are either dead or live within the palace walls, under George’s control.”

“But…” Snow hesitated, taking another sip of the wine. “You’re still the prince to everyone else. He must want you to marry and preserve the lie; how can you be trapped into what Regina wants you to do to me?”

“Because George is demanding it, too.” James sighed and went to the sideboard, pouring a glass of wine for himself and taking a steadying drink of it. “There was a woman… there was little between us but lust and practicality, but she would’ve made a good match for me in terms of ruling. But there was… an accident. A mistake. And she died.”

At the wounded sound she made in sympathy, he turned around. “I’ve refused all other offers of companionship since then. Somewhere along the line, George and Regina came to an accord; I’m guessing it was in exchange for lifting the trade embargoes that your father placed on our kingdom when my father paid him insult. What, I don’t know, as it happened when I was an infant. But George has said, in nearly as many words, that if I don’t bed you by morning, he’ll have you killed. One way or another, he means to keep your stepmother’s good will, because the embargoes have starved this country for funds and he is desperate to keep that from the populace.”

“And so you intend to go through with it,” Snow concluded. There was half the glass of wine left, and she sipped at it again almost reflexively. “Even knowing what that makes you.”

Anger flared in his veins at that; her accusation stung his pride, and worse. “If you were just some inconvenient by-blow that someone was trying to dispose of, you would be smuggled out before sunrise. But your step-mother also happens to be an apprentice of the Dark One, and a formidable sorceress in addition to being a murderess. If you think either of us would be able to defy this plan and be safe from her wroth, then you’re far too naive to have been any use to your people even if you had ascended the throne.”

A sound of outrage escaped her. James crossed the distance as she surged to her feet, the wine glass clattering to the floor as she failed to get it settled properly on the table before he had caught her up into his arms and sealed his mouth across hers to silence her.

Her hands beat ineffectually at his shoulders at first, her resistance slowly dwindling away as he ravaged her mouth with his tongue. She’d never been kissed before; or at least not with any level of real passion; and James used every trick Jack had ever taught him, his tongue teasing her mouth and his lips savoring hers until she was all but mewling in his arms, her weight sagging against his.

“Even with it being Regina,” he breathed, watching her eyes flutter open in the wake of the kiss’ end, “I might be willing to risk it, if you were anyone else. But they knew I couldn’t. Not when it’s you.”

“What do you mean?” Her voice was muzzy, drunk more from the kiss than the wine. Her pupils were flaring with desire, and though she was starting to straighten out of the way she’s swooned into him, James could feel the way her nipples had tightened even through the muslin of her shift and the fine cambric of his shirt.

“Of course you wouldn’t know,” he concluded, smiling against her mouth as he brushed another open kiss across it. “After all, George would never have sought to offer me to your father as a suitor for you. His pride would never allow it, no matter the gain. But in this, he stands to gain everything he wants and send a final insult to your father’s ghost in the bargain.”

The spell was starting to break; the words incautious and pricking at her still-fresh grief. Her hands pressed against his shoulders and he let her push half an arm’s length away, though he kept his hands on her waist. “What do you mean?”

Something was strange to his touch: a hard ridge at her waist beneath the shift. Frowning, James clenched his hands and gathered the shift, lifting the hem line. Snow let out an outraged sound but he wrapped one arm around her like an iron band and slid the free hand beneath the skirt of the shift, reaching unceremoniously for the apex of her thighs.

She was wearing a chastity device. That was what the key was for. Her guards would have needed to unlock the thing in order to allow her the most basic of needs while on the road. Yet another way to humiliate her step-daughter before selling her into life as a bed slave.

Snow’s cheeks were burning as she looked away, her struggles quieting as James’ fingers explored the hard metal encasing her private places, the hint of chamois on the ridge that lined its interior. She was all soft, lush curves against him, except for this thing beneath his fingertips. And she had no idea why this was the perfect honey trap for them both.

Gathering up the fabric of her shift again, James pulled it up, his strength forcing Snow to lift her arms so that the garment could be dragged over her head and cast aside. Her cheeks flamed embarrassment and her arms hugged immediately across her breasts to protect her modesty. They were pinned between her body and his when he drew her back in to kiss her, slowly uncurling to slide around his waist as the gentleness of his mouth wiled her back to pliancy against him.

She didn’t seem to be aware that they were moving until he was sitting, drawing her down into his lap with her back fitted against his chest. His lips traced a searing path along the column of her throat, drawing out tiny sounds from her throat that became a cry of surprised want as his hands glided up from her waist to cup her breasts.

“You are beautiful,” he murmured, his thumbs tracing around the nipples until they puckered and hardened under the attention. Her legs were draped outside of his, her hips shifting restlessly as his touch seemed to send lightning shivering to the steel-encased core of her, the sensation so unfamiliar that Snow could hardly believe this was real. “Soft and pale as new-fallen snow… except you’re anything but frigid, aren’t you, Princess?”

“Don’t…” It was a reedy plea, a gasp of resistance against what her body had never felt before and what her mind knew was something she wasn’t being given a choice about. “James, please… this isn’t…”

“We don’t have a choice,” he reminded her. A soft kiss brushed her nape, followed by a tiny bite that made her cry out again. Her hands found his wrists, almost as if she intended to pull his hands away from her breasts, but all she could seem to do was hold onto them in a grip that would’ve been bruising if she’d ever been taught to hold weapons. “They’ll kill you if we don’t.”

“You have…” The words stuttered out as he toyed with her nipples again, his lips finding the curve of her shoulder. “Why should you care about what happens to me?”

James grinned against her shoulder, then leaned up and licked at the shell of her ear. “You’re not the only one they’ll kill if I don’t fuck you.”

The crude words seemed to startle her; James soothed the motion with a kitten lick to the sensitive place just behind her earlobe. “Without you, George has no heir.”

“I didn’t say it would be me, either.” Turning his head slightly, James called out around her shoulder: “David.”

Snow’s eyes opened, the idea of a third person in the room shocking her out of the sensual spell James had been weaving once again. Out of a side room, another man emerged: he wore similar breeches to James’, but his chest was bare, and his expression was both disconcerted and faintly disapproving. Snow tried to bolt, to cover herself, but James switched their grip and held her fast, keeping her exposed to the newcomer’s gaze.

It took a moment and the initial shock draining away for Snow to notice that the man called David looked exactly like James. Not just similar, as if they were cousins, but exactly alike. “He’s…”

“My twin brother,” James affirmed even before the guess could fall from her lips. “George bought him from our parents, too, except he made David my whipping boy. If I don’t do as he wants, he’ll kill David and make me watch.”

“I’m still not sure he’d go that far, James,” David protested quietly. His eyes never left Snow’s face, respectful of her modesty even as James denied it to her.

“You weren’t in the room, brother,” James returned. “And besides, even if he just whipped you bloody, he’ll still kill her to keep Regina happy.”

Before anyone could say anything else, James spread his legs. It forced Snow’s thighs apart, and Snow blushed dark crimson even though the chastity device hid her mons from David’s gaze. Except, when she flicked up her eyelashes to see if David was looking, she found he wasn’t staring at what the chastity device covered.

He was staring at the soul mark in the shape of two crossed shepherd’s crooks emblazoned on the tender flesh of her inner thigh.

“You think he knows?” David asked, his question directed at James even as his eyes devoured the mark exposed to his gaze.

“It’s easy enough to guess, considering ours,” James confirmed. “So you tell me, brother: how far are you willing to risk that man going if we try to defy him?”


	2. Chapter 2

**~~~***~~~**

“So you tell me, brother: how far are you willing to risk that man going if we try to defy him?”

There was a tense moment, and then David was moving, closing the distance between them and capturing Snow’s face in both hands. She had barely an instant to gasp before his kiss sealed across her parted lips and the world tilted around her in a dizzying rush of heat.

“Forgive us.” It was a whisper against her lips as David withdrew from her, leaving Snow blinking in confusion and almost lax in James’ grip as David stepped back, turning to scan around the room.

“On the table there,” James instructed. His mouth returned to tracing the lines of Snow’s shoulders and neck as David searched with his eyes, then found the key that had been left by the black guards that had brought Snow to them. “The lock is-”

“I saw.” David returned as Snow’s wits began to reassert themselves, her legs futilely trying to close despite James’ powerful thighs bracing them apart, her wrists held fast by a grip accustomed to guiding stallions at full gallop. Her breath was shallow in her chest as David slid the key into the lock embedded at the waistline of the device, a small noise escaping her when he turned it and the mechanisms holding it closed at her sides released.

“Don’t.” The protest was almost a command, would have been if not for the reedy notes of fear threading through the word. But David was already easing the device open and away from her body, a growl rolling in his throat at the chafing marks visible where the edges of the device had rubbed against her skin as she’d moved. David’s fingers found the sensitive skin at her waist and she whimpered at the flash that drove through her at the touch. “Please… you don’t have to do this.”

“If only our fathers hadn’t been such stiff-necked bastards,” James murmured as David left them again, this time to fetch an ewer of water and a cloth from his room. He knelt between James’ legs when he returned, wetting the cloth and using it to bathe the weals at her waist and the joints of her hips. “I could’ve courted you; it would’ve been boring and proper and lifeless, but I would’ve. And whenever we could escape your chaperones, I would’ve snuck my hands right under those huge skirts they make you noble ladies wear… given you a taste of what most queens never get…”

Snow’s eyes had slipped closed, though she tried to keep them open so that she could track what they were doing. Her breath was still shallow, her ample chest heaving from the rapid pace of it, her hips giving an abortive little shift as David used the cloth to soothe the chafe marks on the underside of her thighs, and then higher, deftly bathing her cleft free of any traces that her captors might not have cared to see to.

“We would have married in stupendous ceremony, you know,” James went on, painting the image in her mind of everything they would never have. “Everyone of consequence from two kingdoms, crammed into a chapel to watch us marry, and then a grand ball reception where we would’ve needed to dance and eat barely enough to feed a cat and try not to drink so much that I’d embarrass myself later. And then I would’ve brought you back to our rooms, where David would’ve been waiting for us both.”

Snow’s eyes fluttered open, her head turning to look at James for half a heartbeat before her gaze jerked back down to the man still kneeling between her legs. Because David was now lightly, carefully pressing the cool wet cloth to the tender flesh between her thighs, his slow swipes sending shivers of lightning up through her core.

“Twins share everything, you know.” James’ voice was a beguiling, seductive curl in her ear, his hands urging hers down until her palms rested on the arms of the chair they were seated in. “We have the same face because we each hold one half of the same soul. So while you would’ve married only me…”

“You belong to both of us,” David finished, his voice hoarse with want. “And this might not be how we should’ve happened…”

“But now that we have you, we’ll be damned if we’ll let anyone take you away,” James finished. Snow was barely able to register the words, her eyes closed and her head lolling back against James’ shoulder as the way David bathed her most private places set fire to her blood. A glance passed between them, and then James was wrapping his hands over hers, folding her fingers around the arms of the chair in a tense grip. “Keep those there,” he told her firmly, watching her lashes flutter against her cheekbones as her eyes tried to open in lust-addled bafflement.

And then David’s mouth came down, his tongue tracing the soft folds he had just been bathing, and Snow cried out, her hips jerking under the unexpected intimacy. David’s hands came up to frame them as he settled in, holding her still to take his ministrations. As he did, James’ hands released her wrists, ghosting up her ribcage to cup her breasts. His thumbs traced around her nipples in slow, teasing rhythmic circles, drawing them erect enough to pinch between his fingers.

It was like nothing Snow had ever experienced before. The pair of them were playing her body like a fine instrument: David’s tongue cleverly mapping her folds and teasing between them while James tormented her breasts, her body dissolving between them into a shivering mass of raw sensation. Dimly, she remembered that this wasn’t the wedding night James had painted in her mind’s eye; that this was a trap Regina had set to ensure that she would never be allowed to claim her father’s throne. That she didn’t know them, even if their cryptic conversation about her soulmark implied what she thought it did. But it was hard to concentrate on objections with James’ murmuring encouragements in her ear, urging her on towards something she didn’t understand and an unfamiliar pressure in her belly coiling tighter and tighter with every tiny movement…

Fingers left her breast, gliding down to lightly graze the tender flesh that David had licked and sucked and teased until it ached and throbbed for want of… something… clever, callused pads that found a nub and worried it in tight, firm circles while David’s tongue worked between her folds and wriggled… “Come for us, Snow.”

One shocked cry. Another as she twisted, almost as if trying to escape. And then the pressure crested, exploding out in waves and dragging Snow under with a long, moaning scream. Her body arched in their grip as it took her, her fingers clutching at the chair until her nails sliced through the upholstery. And through it all, they kissed and petted her, soothing her through the spasms and easing her back down from the heights they’d driven her to.

Her thighs were wet. David was still kneeling between them when her eyes fluttered open again: his clean-shaven jaw and mouth shiny with it and his hair in disarray around his shoulders as he gazed up at her, his eyes dark with something she’d seen in men’s eyes but had no name for. His hands were on her thighs now, the thumb of his right hand lightly stroking her soulmark as he watched her face. James’ hands rested on her torso: one on her belly and one just under her breasts. She could feel something thick and hard pressing against her backside through James’ breeches, and David’s were tented in a way no man would ever allow to be seen in polite company.

Snow might have been physically innocent, but she knew what was going to happen next. They meant to have her. To save her life. To sate their lust. To protect David from the whipping post or worse.

As if he’d read the thought in her mind, David stood and reached for her hands. James’ legs finally closed and Snow let David’s grip bring her to her unsteady feet, the prince-who-was-a-slave standing up directly behind her and placing steadying hands on her hips. “If you do this,” Snow tried, her voice thready as she directed one last plea to David, “Regina wins.”

“No,” David refuted. “Because we’ll still be alive. We’ll be together, and there’ll be children someday. That’s more than she will ever have.”

“Let she and our father have their power for now,” James asserted, his voice a low curl of vicious promise. “It won’t keep them warm at night. We don’t need to beat them; just outlive them, and savor what pleasure we can take in the meantime.”

Snow shivered even as they walked her into James’ great bedroom, thoughts of what would happen next racing through her mind. Would they take turns in her, one watching her humiliation while the other mounted her? Or would one want her mouth, as she’d heard sometimes men wanted? Could one claim her maidenhead while the other was between her lips? What if she bit one accidentally? How would they decide…?

“Shhh…” James pressed a gentle kiss to her lips as they lowered her to the bed. “So many questions… someone might think the pure Princess Snow wasn’t as innocent as her name suggests.” Snow’s mouth dropped open as she blushed a furious crimson, realizing that at least some of her whirling thoughts had been given voice in her anxiety.

“We can that way,” David assured her, seating himself on the edge of the bed. The firelight caught some of the still-glistening slick around his mouth as he gave her a lopsided smile. “But not tonight.”

To Snow’s surprise, James then knelt before his brother, unlacing David’s breeches and urging them down his hips. David lifted enough that James could get them free, and then James was peeling them down David’s legs and tossing them carelessly aside before leaning in to press an almost sweet kiss to the tip of his brother’s erection, the bead of pearly fluid that had been welling up there smearing across his lips. “Should I humiliate myself before our lady, brother?” James asked, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

“You’ll have to give Snow at least one more while you wait for me to recover if you do,” David told him, all too aware that Snow’s shocked incredulity was increasing with every word.

“I was planning on doing that anyway,” James told him coyly. With a shrug, he pushed David’s thighs apart and bent his head, lapping at the tip again before opening his mouth to swallow David to the root.

At once, David’s hands were in his hair, his head thrown back and eyes squeezed closed as James worked his arousal with lips and throat and hollowed cheeks. Blank astonishment slowly morphed into something like fascination as Snow watched James almost mercilessly bring his brother to the very edge, pulling away just in time for Snow to see milk-white fluid spurting from the slit as David made a harsh sound somewhere between a groan and a shout. Without shame, James wrapped a hand around his brother’s manhood and stroked him through the spasms, his twinkling eyes catching Snow’s as he did so.

“Did that look like humiliation, Princess?” James taunted as the final blurts of David’s climax died away. She shook her head as James wiped the fluid from his hand with his lawn shirt before pulling it over his head and tossing it in the same direction David’s breeches had gone. He clambered past his brother onto the bed after shedding his own breeches, noting with some impatience that Snow still shrank away from him a little as he closed on her. His mouth caught hers, the pressure of his body forcing her own to stretch out beneath him across the pillows. With a slick twist, the hand that had just eased David through his orgasm slid between her thighs and broke them apart, two fingers breaching her to the first knuckle before she even had time to protest.

Snow cried out, her hands shoving at his shoulders even as those fingers crooked just a fraction, stroking the sensitive ceiling just inside her channel and dragging another gasping cry out of her. “You’re so wet,” James crooned. “My brother is _very_ good with his mouth, isn’t he? I could’ve watched him eat your sweet slit all night, you know… and he could’ve, too. Sometime, we will: I’ll keep you right where we want you, keep those pretty thighs spread nice and wide, and we’ll just count how many times he can make you come on his tongue.” A curling little twist, a fraction deeper and a drag of blunt nails. Snow let out a sob, clutching at his shoulders now as her head tossed and her hips became restive under his touch. “And then? We’ll switch, and I’ll see if I can beat him. You’ll be hoarse from how loudly we’ll make you scream… loud enough that the whole castle will know…

“And when you think you can’t come anymore?” James’ hand withdrew, and Snow was whimpering from the loss and the want that was almost painful in her belly. “That’s when we’ll push these silky thighs that much further apart and fuck you, one and then the other and then the first again, over and over. You’ll forget what it’s like to not have one of us pounding this pretty cunt open, to come without one of our cocks balls deep between your legs.”

His hands pushed her thighs wider, and then James’ mouth was too busy to spin more words of passionate somedays. Snow shrieked, her hands threading into his hair even as his came up to hold her hips in place at the angle that gave him the most access, and then his nimble tongue was tracing the same paths that David’s had. Where David was gentler, more languid, James was ruthless, seeking out the most sensitive places and worrying them until Snow’s knees were drawn up and she was thrusting her hips up against his mouth, a second climax building to a shattering crescendo that left her gasping their names and trembling along every nerve.

Somehow, she’d become laid out between them; when Snow’s senses realigned, James was rolling away and David was pressing up against her on the other side, leaning up to kiss the remnants of her climax from his brother’s lips. James made a soft, indulgent sound as they kissed above her, a sight that was too natural to have just been for her benefit but making something twinge in renewed interest inside her all the same, and then they were parting and David was kissing her instead, the musk of her nether lips strange and thrilling even third-hand as she tasted the shape of his mouth.

They shifted as David indulged her mouth in long, beguiling kisses; by the time the position of their bodies registered on her again, she was lying atop David, who was reclined against pillows propping him up. Her thighs were braced apart by his hips, and his renewed erection was a strange, blunt presence that brushed against her entrance with every tiny shift of their bodies. James was behind them, his hands on her waist and his own need still proudly curving away from his body.

Unbidden, unwanted, a memory washed through her: the third season they’d bred Roman, shortly before her fourteenth birthday. She’d snuck down to the stables in the early morning to watch. The filly they’d selected had been skittish, refusing to remain still in the open area of the barn where the stable hands had gathered. They’d finally had to force her into a breeding stall where she couldn’t escape, and even then she had reared and panicked at the scent of Roman behind her. When Roman was finally able to mount her, she had let out a sound like a scream and tried to buck him off, only quieting when the large appendage was finally inside her and there was nothing left to fight against.

Snow had been horrified. She’d gone at once to Regina, who had been given dominion over the royal stables because the young queen’s love of horses was rivaled only by Snow’s own. Her step-mother had dismissed her concerns with a contemptuous wave of her hand. _“Brood mares don’t have to like the stud that mounts them,”_ she’d told the princess casually. _“It’s the same with anything else that breeds. All that matters is that she’s fertile and that the stud is of good stock. What she wants, or doesn’t want, is irrelevant; only the end result is important.”_

David was still kissing her. The place between her legs was still throbbing from the two climaxes they’d brought her to, her insides aching for something that she was starting to think she understood. But then James’ hand slid away from her hip and the other was moving her just a little… the blunt, broad tip of someone’s arousal lining up with the opening between her thighs... Snow panicked, pushing away from David and trying to roll off of him. 

At once, David’s hands were at her waist, James’ hands clamping onto her hips almost hard enough to bruise. “Snow, don’t-”

“I can’t,” she blurted, struggling against their grip. “Don’t do this; please-”

“Sshhh.” David sat up into her space, his legs shifting to fold under him even as they kept hers braced apart and James crowded against her back. One of David’s hands came up to brush at her short-cropped hair, his lips kissing her tears away. “It’s all right. It won’t hurt for long; I promise.”

She made a soft noise of panic, her body swaying as it tried to find a weak point in their caging embraces, and James kissed the place where her neck curved into her shoulder. “It’s true,” he told her. “Your body was made for this. More so than David’s or mine, and I can ride him for half the night without hurting him now.”

Snow stilled at that, her head slowly drawing back so that she could stare at David. Her eyes were huge and a little wild at the edges, but they had her attention. “It’s true,” David echoed. “Your body just has to get used to it… like riding a horse.”

The comparison dragged a snorting laugh out of James, which in turn made David glare at him for possibly breaking the spell of comfort they were trying to weave. It was so absurd, so starkly normal in the midst of all the anxiety and the strangeness and the terror she’d lived in for days since being abducted from her chambers after her father’s public funeral…

A giggle escaped before she could stop it. David’s eyes widened when he heard it; she could feel the curve of James’ grin against her cheek. They were both still hard, and though the throb between her own legs was started into diminish, it didn’t change anything. They were her studs, and she the filly trapped in their breeding stall.

Almost as if they could sense her panic receding, David smiled up at her as one hand slid down between her legs. His fingers were less callused than James’, but no less deft as they slid along her soft folds, easily finding the taut little pearl at the peak of them and lightly teasing around it. Snow gave a soft little gasp, her eyes shuttering closed and her fingers flexing against his chest where they’d come to rest trying to push her way free of them. “Snow, please…” David whispered. “I know you don’t want us…”

“At least not like this,” James continued. One of his own hands crept back and beneath her, fingers easily finding her slit and teasing inside again. She was no longer soaking wet from her two orgasms, but she was still slick and hot, parting with a little effort around his fingertips. “But you have to let us…”

“Because there’s no other way,” David finished. His lips found one of her nipples and teased it with his tongue, laving the sensitive nub above and teasing the one beneath his fingers. Snow gave a stuttering little cry, her fingers clawing towards David’s shoulders and digging in almost hard enough to draw blood. James guided David’s erection back into position with his free hand, using his fingers to keep her channel open as the flared hood once again slotted into place against her. Snow jolted, but her arms slid around David’s neck as he lifted his head again to kiss her mouth, her body trembling uncontrollably but no longer coiling to flee.

“Let us,” James whispered again, brushing a kiss over the shell of her ear. “Snow… Princess… let us…”

With a whimper, Snow nodded, her body tense as a violin string.

James’ hands found her hips. Without needing to so much as glance at one another to coordinate, David surged up and James pushed her down against the motion, burying David to the root inside her body in a single powerful thrust. A high cry of pain left Snow’s throat, tears slipping from the corners of her eyes at the sudden, piercing fullness that invaded deeper than she’d have thought possible.

They stayed like that, suspended in time for a handful of heartbeats. David’s lips traced the tracks of her tears, and James’ thumbs traced soothing, rhythmic arcs along the small of her back. She could feel every inch of David inside her, the hard length pulsing with every beat of his heart, her inner muscles aching from the unfamiliar stretch it forced on them.

Finally, a groan broke free from somewhere deep in David’s chest. “Gods, Snow…” His hands were gently curved around her ribcage, flexing from the stress of remaining still.

“How does she feel, brother?” James asked, tracing another kiss over the curve of her shoulder.

“Like silk,” David confessed. Snow let out a shaky moan and blushed, sniffing a little from her tears. “So tight… James, you have no idea…”

“I’ll find out for myself soon enough.” Kisses peppering along the line of her shoulders and neck again. “But I think you’d better get her warmed up first, don’t you?”

Snow forced her eyes open at that, not sure she understood what it meant. David was looking at James, something unreadable in his face, and then he nodded. Without further warning, James’ grip tightened, holding her fast in place while David began to move.

Her body was still tense, the slick from her two prior orgasms having died away in the delays. Even shallow motions of his hips had Snow mewling in discomfort, her previously untried muscles struggling to adjust. Slowly, David shifted to recline against the pillows, bringing Snow with him so that she was lying atop him again and he was rocking up into her body in long, slow pushes.

It wasn’t ideal, but there was no help for it. James had little doubt that his father had spies watching even now. If David was the first one to breed her, they were in just as much danger as if they didn’t fuck her at all. And if they gave George a show to report back to Regina, it might keep him from setting spies on them every night until Snow conceived.

David’s rhythm never faltered even when Snow jerked almost upright as one of James’ fingers slid up into her alongside David’s erection. She gasped, a short painful sound that almost hiccuped out of her lungs, a convulsive shudder sweeping through her when he added a second and the stretch she had been getting numb to suddenly reasserted itself. “What are you-”

“Just relax, Snow.” James pressed closer as his fingers shifted alongside David’s rolling thrusts, his free hand pushing her back down to lie against David’s chest and keeping her there. She let out another whimper, twisting into a pained whine, and James almost growled to himself before reaching for the jar of oil normally reserved for when he and David were alone. He’d hoped they could keep her wet enough that it wouldn’t be needed, but clearly that wasn’t in the cards tonight.

He drizzled as much as he could on David, letting his thrusts spread the viscous liquid up into Snow’s channel. There was a sound almost like wonder, not quite pleasure when the warming properties began to take effect, which was nearly drowned out seconds later by David’s groan as his tempo increased almost reflexively. Two fingers slid back in, now slick from the oil as well, twisting slowly until a third could push in alongside them. Snow made a sound that James had only heard when healers had needed to set one of Jack’s broken fingers, back when they’d still been using wooden swords.

“It’s all right,” David soothed her, the words half drowned by a sob of pain that slid out as James moved his fingers. “You’re doing beautifully, Snow.” James slid his fingers again, making Snow cry out, and David growled. “Brother, it’s enough.”

Whatever Snow might have thought of that, there was no questioning the relief in the breath she let out when James’ fingers left her. The stretch around David’s manhood was trial enough, and she couldn’t fathom why James had been tormenting her in such a way. The strange warmth that had started spreading up through her was helping, and with David slowing almost to a halt again, it might be possible to bear this until he finished inside her.

But then something was pressing against the place where she and David were joined. Hard and broad and blunt, just as David had been before… but that was…

It pushed in, not quite slow and utterly inexorable, forcing Snow’s channel open even wider than David was. The bright edge of the pain stole her breath even to scream, and her eyes flew open to stare down at the man beneath her as she tried to process what they were doing to her.

“It’s all right,” David repeated. His hands smoothed over her face even as the tears spilled from her eyes, his voice pitched as if he was trying to gentle a nervous colt. “You can do this. You’re doing so well, Snow. You’re all right; you can take us. It’s all right.”

Slowly, James’ arm shifted from bracing her down against David to curl around her chest. He was fully seated now, curving his body over her back even as he gently lifted her just a fraction away from David’s chest. The shift eased the pressure inside her somewhat, almost making them bearable, and Snow’s palms flattened against the mattress on either side of David’s arms in an attempt to steady herself in that position.

They didn’t move. It was a mercy. Gradually, though Snow couldn’t have believed it possible, the pain began to ebb, dulling into an ache that rivaled the worst of her monthly cramps. They were pulsing inside her, a throb that matched their heartbeats; the rhythm of it became easiest to focus on, and the way her own seemed to match to it, her breath no longer so shallow as it too synchronized with the twins’.

At some unknown signal, they began to move inside her: long deep pushes that made the ache flare and drove whines past her lips as she tried to hold on. Their hands were everywhere at once, until she could barely tell who was touching her where, thumbing around her nipples and touching the pearl at the peak of her over-stretched folds, teasing the edges of her soul mark and stroking along her arms and sides and thighs as they rode her in tandem.

Their lips were never still, either: kisses still rained over her skin, from James lavishing her neck and ears and shoulders to David suckling at her breasts and pinching tender bites into her collar bone and stealing the cries from her mouth. It was still too much; Snow was certain it would never not be more than she could bear; but their attentions made something inside her want to believe that she could learn to crave this. That she had been made for this, and even their unceasing thrusts could rebuild that strange pleasure that their lips and fingers had given her. All she needed do was trust them, and let them ride her this way whenever their desire called them to.

It was harder to hold onto that glimmer of heat as their thrusts came faster, pushing in harder, forcing impossibly deeper. James was panting raggedly in her ear, David’s reassuring murmurs becoming more and more strained until they were finally abandoned entirely, and it was all Snow could do to keep from screaming…

With a harsh groan, James shoved into her as deeply as he could and remained still. Snow could feel the way his body shuddered and twitched inside her, a sharp contrast to the stuttering thrusts of David’s hips until he too stilled, a cry wrenching from his throat and his hands clamping onto her thighs. Slowly, beneath the burning ache of her overworked muscles, Snow became aware of wet heat blurting into her womb from where they were buried inside her. Their seed, she realized as she fought to regain breath she hadn’t been conscious of holding. This was what it felt like to be bred by a man. Two men. At the same time.

One of them slid out, setting off a fresh wave of pain. A burst of nausea struck her in its wake, and then she was choking, unable to breathe, tears squeezing from her eyes. Dimly, she could hear them calling out to her, letting her vomit bile into the chamber pot, their hands holding onto her body as it threatened to fly apart inside her own skin.

When it finally subsided, Snow could feel herself swaying in their arms. They were saying her name, the syllable infused with concern, but her head was light and her body hurt, and she couldn’t remember replying. One of them moved away; she wasn’t sure who; and when he returned there was a cup of cool wine being lifted to her lips. She drank unthinking, grateful for the way it washed the gall from her throat, and in moments, everything had faded to the comforting black of slumber.


	3. Chapter 3

**~~~***~~~**

The next thing Snow remembered, her eyes were slitting open to dawn light filtering through curtains. Her body was bracketed by the twins’, their breathing soft and regular as they slept beside her. She could feel what they’d done to her still, the deep ache between her legs and in her belly threatening to become a sharper if she tried to move. Her thighs burned as if from a long, difficult ride, and more places than she could count that were still sensitive from being suckled or bitten.

But there was no evidence of the copious fluid they’d pumped into her at the end having leaked back out onto the bedclothes, nor any sour smell from how sick she’d been in the midst of her panic after it was finally over. She was wearing a man’s shirt as a sleep shift, and her skin felt clean, as if they had bathed her after she’d lost consciousness.

A moment of guilt swept through her when she realized the care they’d taken with her. They’d hurt her, done something to her that she couldn’t have imagined possible, let alone being put through during a first bedding. But she recognized that they’d had little choice about bedding her at all, and they had tried to make it bearable for her in addition to lavishing pleasure on her before they’d done it. Her reaction felt shameful, somehow, despite how overwhelmed she’d been in that moment and being unable to stop herself.

Her slight movements woke the man to her left, and Snow found herself blushing as he pushed himself up onto one elbow to look at her. She wasn’t sure which one he was. The twin to her right shifted, rolling onto his side to face her and obviously trying not to crowd her. “How do you feel?”

“I hurt,” she admitted. There was little point in doing elsewise; they wouldn’t believe her.

“I’m sorry.” The one that was lying on her right. “If it weren’t for George’s spies, we could’ve eased you into that, and certainly not on the same night we took your maidenhead.”

“Spies?” Snow heard the reedy thread in her voice as she echoed the word, her eyes going wide as saucers.

“It’s common practice for there to be spies in the servants’ corridors during a consummation,” the twin on her left informed her, reaching up to brush gentle fingers through her sleep-mussed hair. “Normally, there’s a wedding first, rather than a deal that sells one of the parties into slavery. But they were certainly there, making sure that James did as George commanded him.”

“And more the point,” James said from her right, “George can’t have any reason to be certain that your child, when you eventually catch, is David’s rather than mine. So long as you and David never make love without me here, they’ll never have any way to be sure whose seed starts any of the children you’ll bear us. And that’s the only way we can keep you safe.”

Nodding slowly, Snow tried to work through everything. It threatened to rise up again, to cut off her breath and drive tears from her eyes again. But in the same moment, Snow felt the way they wanted to reach for her and didn’t. Felt them hold back the instinctive need to touch and comfort her, as though their touch would be unwelcome. It wasn’t hard to imagine that, for many women, even simple human kindness would be unwelcome from men that had forced them into something like what had transpired the previous night without consent, or even forewarning of what they intended.

But they were her soulmates. And she wasn’t insensible of what they’d said about George and Regina the night before, or what they were saying of him now. She could forgive them for treating her like the slave she was now, with their blood hot and the threats to her safety and theirs so immediate. They knew the shape of the chess board she’d been dropped into far better than she. Surviving the game now completely depended on her learning, and quickly. Especially if she was going to retain any semblance of the autonomy she’d taken for granted for her entire life in the bargain.

Rolling carefully to her right, Snow captured James’ surprised face in her hands and pressed a kiss to his parted lips. It was open, and unpracticed, and yet his arms were around her in a moment and he was kissing her back as one knee slid between her legs. The change in the angle eased the ache between her legs and tweaked it at the same time, but Snow ignored it, concentrating on the shape of James’ desire, thickening between their bellies as she kissed him. On the brush of David’s arousal, born purely from watching them together, against the cleft of her buttocks.

She couldn’t take them both at the same time. Not so soon. But if there were any spies still set upon them, she could give them something to report. And begin how she meant to go on.

“Snow…” It was a groan of caution as Snow shifted her weight again, rolling onto her back. James braced his weight and broke her hold, lying half atop her with an expression so hungry it bordered on pain. “You should rest today; let us take care of you.”

“I’ll be fine,” she murmured, reaching up to try and draw him down to her. “I want to know if you feel different from your brother.”

A throaty laugh from David, and then he was moving into her vision, kneeling behind James and wrapping his arms around his brother’s chest. “It seems our soulmate is going to be as stubborn as you are, brother. Shall we give her a better taste of what our bed can offer?”

James groaned as David’s hands strayed over his body, grazing the places where he was most sensitive as Snow’s eyes tracked the motions. Moments later, she was pushing herself upright, her slim, soft hands following where David’s led, deviating only when she spied the flash of muted white across the inside of James’ thigh, paler than the rest of his skin.

A spray of snowbells. Her mark.

The lightest pass of her fingers over it made James cry out, shuddering in David’s grip. David pressed a kiss to his brother’s broad shoulder and grinned at her. “Are you sure, Snow?”

There was a curious twinge between her legs; the ache of her inexperienced muscles was still there, but something else was growing underneath it. Something that made her hand shift and cup James’ manhood at the base. He let out a gutteral sound, harsh and involuntary, as she explored the part of him that had so thoroughly invaded her body the night before. It wasn’t quite long enough to span both of her palms together, but it was thick and hot, curving proudly away from his body. There was a flared hood at the top, and a heavy vein throbbing against her hand. Unsurprisingly, it was similar to David’s, though drawing exact comparisons between them was something she was only partially aware of in the moment.

Something ceramic rattled; it jerked Snow’s attention away from her contemplation of James’ erection, her eyes scanning the room for a servant carrying in a breakfast tray. A shuddering sound from James drew her attention back to find his face shuttered in rapture, David’s posture now slightly further back and one of his hands no longer visible.

“He’s tight,” David told her, his tone almost casual. Snow’s eyes went wide when she realized what he had to be referring to. What his not-visible hand was doing. “It’s been a while since he’s let me open him up.”

“You mean, you really…?” Snow wasn’t sure she could put the words to voice. This was still too new to her, the idea of brothers also being lovers too alien. Faced with the loving familiarity of the way they touched each other, the casual intimacy that seemed wholly reciprocal, she couldn’t find any conviction in the objections she knew most people would have to such a thing.

But then again, they were twins. Two halves of the same person. Perhaps that was the difference, in the end.

“Yes.” David’s eyes met hers, bright with something almost hypnotic. “Do you want to help?”

“David-” It was a warning barely rattled out of James’ throat, the sound throttled by something that sounded like a moan.

But Snow was already moving, shifting to kneel beside David on the bed while James pitched forward, catching himself on his hands and letting his head hang heavy between his shoulders. The position let her see that two of the fingers on David’s right hand were sunk to the base knuckles into James’ body, a rose-pink furl of muscle taut around them.

It should’ve been wrong. It should’ve been disgusting. That orifice had one use in Snow’s experience, and certainly that was as far removed from a woman’s duties in the bedchamber as anything could be. But all Snow could think as she watched David’s fingers shift and scissor, stretching that dusky ring wider and wider, was that she wanted to know what David was doing to make James react so viscerally. To know if she could make James make those sounds, too.

There was a pot of oil on the bed, the top set aside. Experimentally, Snow dipped a finger into it, watching as the faintly golden slickness smoothed itself along her skin as she lifted it out.

“It’s pressed from olives,” David told her, drawing her attention. “Go ahead; he can take three now.”

Her brow furrowing, Snow let her oil-slick finger touch down where David’s were already inside. The contact made James start, groaning, and Snow almost pulled her finger back when she heard a strained, reedy, “please…”

Only a moment of resistance, and then her finger was sliding in smoothly alongside David’s own. James cried out and pushed back against them, letting their fingers sink even deeper as David showed her how to curl it in a way that complimented his own movements. Snow almost got lost in the feel of his body around her finger: soft and tight and hot, like slickened silk warmed near a hearth. David had said last night that she’d felt like silk inside. Was this what he’d meant? Were men’s and women’s bodies really so similar after all?

“Do you think you can take him?”

The question confused Snow for the barest moment. She looked up into David’s face and his meaning registered a heartbeat later, his expression calm and yet somehow burning at the thought of her beneath his brother while he was inside him.

For a moment, despite the fact that she’d initiated this, she almost wanted to say no. To tell him that she wanted to watch the brothers’ lovemaking from the sidelines and let her muscles heal a bit more before opening her legs to them again. They would let her; she was certain. They would give her as much time as she wanted before breeding her again.

Except this wasn’t just breeding for them. And if becoming accustomed to this was like learning to ride, then she knew from experience that her muscles wouldn’t learn to adjust to her new situation if she didn’t keep using them.

Nodding, she leaned up across the space between them and gave David a soft kiss. He returned it with a smile, slicking his fingers again and gliding in a third of his own to replace the one she withdrew. Wiping her hand clean on a length of toweling that was draped across the end of the bed, Snow gauged James’ position for a moment before picking her approach and wriggling into place beneath him, her legs slipping apart and tangling around his flanks while her arms wound around his neck.

James kissed her, his breath coming in shallow pants as David gave him a fourth finger. “Snow…”

“Being in this kingdom wasn’t my choice,” Snow told him softly, winding her fingers into his hair. His eyes shuttered closed again, opened in something between agony and lust. “Being in this castle, being your bed slave… even what happened last night… I didn’t have a choice. Let me choose this, James. I want to see what it’s like when I get to choose.”

A tremor ran through James’ body, his eyes closing against a wave of something Snow didn’t know how to name yet. And then he was shifting his weight, one hand parting her damp folds and lining the leaking head of his arousal up with her entrance. She nodded, drawing his head down until he was kissing her again, trying to relax and breathe as the girth of him pushed into her body.

She held his mouth to hers, letting it muffle the tiny cry that she couldn’t help letting out as he sank in. It was mirrored only a moment later by James himself, and Snow gasped when she realized why.

David was inside James. James was inside her, and David was inside him, his own arousal pressed into the place where their fingers had been only moments ago.

James lifted his head away from hers as that sank in, searching her face. Snow just stared up at him in wonder, in uncertainty. It was uncomfortable having him inside her; she’d been expecting that. But it wasn’t painful as it had been the previous night, and there was something unguarded in James just now that distracted Snow from her own discomfort. Something that made her trace the edges of his face with her fingers, trying to smooth away the worry that lined his features. “It’s all right,” she told him, though she wasn’t sure why.

It earned her a kiss. A smile that was as genuine as it was charming.

And then there was no more time for words. Not with David easing out of his brother’s body and surging back in, driving James completely into Snow’s body and dragging a cry from all three at once.

Slow at first. David controlled the pace with the movements of his own body, James’ hips following the rhythm his brother’s set. Snow clinging to James as the discomfort in her muscles transmuted into something she’d only felt glimpses of the night before. Feeling almost that they were both inside her yet again, with David’s weight as well as James’ behind every stroke. Her own instincts making her shift until her hips were tilted at just the right angle and James was nudging the gates of her womb with every drive. Faster then, the heavy friction inside her body easing with every stroke, and James crying out on every one, his face pinched from the effort of… something… every line of his body going tense and trembling above her…

Unthinking, Snow dragged his head back down for another kiss. James fought her grip, broke his head away, breath exploding between them. “Don’t, Snow… I won’t last…”

“Then don’t,” Snow argued, pulling him back down and sinking her small, white teeth into the underside of his jaw. “It’s all right, James…”

A hard thrust from David, slamming James so deep that Snow was almost able to feel them in her throat. And then James was thrashing against her, wet heat blurting into her womb in heavy gouts as he cried out. David was still thrusting, chasing his own release for a few more strokes, forcing James that much closer against her womb as he finally spent inside his brother.

They moved in slow degrees after that. David extracting himself from James, fetching the toweling and wetting it in the ewer beside the bed. He tended to James while James stared down at Snow, something like guilt hovering around his features now that the firestorm between them was cooling.

When David finally urged him off Snow so that he could attend her, James hovered for just long enough to see her wince when David pressed the cloth to her tender mons. At once, he was pulling on hose and tugging on a bell pull, exiting the bedroom and waiting for the servant he’d summoned in the receiving room of his apartments.

“You didn’t come,” David explained when Snow looked to him in confusion. “And you’re hurting. James has had to do some awful things in the name of being George’s son and heir… he doesn’t see himself as a good man and sometimes he isn’t… sometimes he can’t be in order to keep us alive. But hurting women… especially sexually… especially _you_... that’s not who he is.”

“You understand why... don’t you?” Snow asked. Her hand came to rest on his thigh as he cleaned away the remnants of slick and seed, the coolness of the water soothing some of the ache that was setting back in.

“Better than you might expect,” David confirmed. “And so does he. But he doesn’t have to be happy about the fact that these are the choices we have to work from. Not when in another, better world, we would’ve had the courtship and wedding and marriage that he talked about last night. One in which we’re all equals, and no one is threatening to kill us because of petty grudges.” He finished, and helped Snow to sit up against the bank of pillows at the head of the bed. “I’ll go talk to him. It’ll be all right, Snow. I promise.”

Watching him pull on his own hose and leave in James’ path, Snow tried to hope that it would be.

**~~~**

The first day passed quietly enough. James had summoned a servant to arrange food and baths for them, as well as sending for proper clothing for Snow. The slave matron had arrived to take her in hand shortly after breakfast, clucking over the fact that she’d been given no chance to make Snow presentable before she’d been given to the prince. But the woman was kind enough, ensuring that Snow had a bath and ordering clean clothes for her befitting a bed slave in a royal household.

By the time she was returned to James’ apartments, which was where James had apparently ordered that she be housed right alongside David, Snow was feeling somewhat better. None of the ministrations she’d received were on par with the luxury in which she’d been raised, but after the dehumanizing way the Black Guards had treated her on the journey and the life-changing events of the previous night, it felt steadying to be clean and combed and in a dress of plain red damask as she walked back into James’ rooms.

Both David and James were in the sitting room when she arrived. David had James’ feet in his lap, fingers kneading into the soles as he spoke in low, urgent tones. “James, I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t-”

“It’s not up for discussion,” James replied, glancing up when Snow entered. A smile broke over his face, relief etching David’s as well; apparently, though her condition the previous evening hadn’t dampened their ardor, it had been just as distressing to them as it had been to her. “You look better. How are you feeling?”

“Like I went riding for far longer than I should’ve.” The reply got a laugh from David and a blush from James as she sat down in the third chair they’d gathered by the hearth. It helped break the tension, and Snow felt her breath come that much more easily. “I’ll be fine, James. I’m sorry if I upset you earlier.”

“David explained what you were thinking,” James said by way of forgiveness. He shifted his feet off David’s thighs and poured her a glass of wine. “But this isn’t going to work like that again, Snow. I don’t care what your or David’s official titles are; in these rooms, no one is just here for someone else’s pleasure. That’s not who we’re going to be.”

Snow took the glass when he offered it, letting her fingers trail across his as she did so and nodding. “All right.”

“As long as we’re all here,” James continued, “I think we need to establish a few other things for moving forward.”

“James,” David cut in, a whole reproachful speech in a single word. “You’re overestimating the danger here, I think.”

“No. I’m planning for contingencies.” James looked at Snow. “My brother and I have a twinspeak. We mostly use it for shorthand anymore; it’s easier to remember to speak the common tongue around outsiders if we keep using it even when we’re alone. But you’re going to learn it, because all of our code words are in twinspeak.”

“That’s reasonable,” Snow agreed. “We’ll need to teach it to the children, too, when they come.”

“And that’s another thing.” James glanced around briefly, almost as though he wasn’t sure they were alone, before speaking again. “If anything ever happens to me, I want you both to run. Don’t wait for George to act. Don’t wait for anything. Take the children, if there are any, and get as far away from here as you possibly can.”

David looked appalled. “James, you can’t expect-”

“I mean it, David.” He fixed his brother with an expression so serious that it brought tears to Snow’s eyes. “If I’m gone, the best case scenario is that George will make you step into my place and pretend to be me. At worst, he’ll just execute you both and take any children we’ve had for his own ends. I don’t want that for any of you. If I’m not here to protect you, you have to take Snow and the children and leave.”

For a measured moment, the brothers were locked in silence, a contest of wills to which Snow was a breathless spectator. Finally, David spoke. “Then you’d better make sure that nothing happens to you,” he said evenly. “If you’re here to protect us, there won’t be anything to run from, will there?”

James smiled, a hint of sadness in the corners, before leaning across the space to kiss his brother on the mouth. “If I can, I will, brother. I always have, haven’t I?”

“I think that’s enough of that kind of talk for now,” Snow put in, unable to shake the chill that had prickled down her spine at the exchange. “I might’ve been raised in a castle, but I don’t know this one or what to expect from the people here. I need you both to catch me up on what I need to know, and quickly.”

Both of the twins nodded.

**~~~**

From her sitting room in the palace far to the east, Regina gazed through her mirror and watched the trio of soulmates plan for the present. Making strategies for carving out a place for love in an impossible situation, and arrangements to protect children that would one day follow.

Regina watched, and smiled, and began preparing the next step in her own plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I’m working on the next story in this series, so if you’re enjoying, keep a weather eye out!


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